DSM Weekly Search Marketing Digest – 08/05/15

We’ve talked in the past about Entities as the platform for how Google aims to develop their semantic understanding of the internet – essentially, by rewarding sites that provide sufficient verifiable semantic data to Google that it can then cache, order and regurgitate for users.

The essence of Entities was, for many, conflated with Google’s development of Google+ (and the associated elevation of Authorship) which was seen as central to a vision of how authority and relevance would be assessed and displayed in the future. And I guess the demise of Google+ (for now), along with the roll out of Mobilegeddon (or whatever we’re calling it this week) has taken the focus off semantic coding and the role we can expect it to play in the future success of your website.

As such, it’s timely that Bill Slawski has highlighted some new movement on Google’s part – with new patents that clearly demonstrate Google is still attempting to use its overwhelming influence of user habits to facilitate its deeper analysis of meaning within searches and how to incorporate these habits effectively into its algorithms.

Naturally it’s very early in the process and Bill inevitably steers clear of making wide-ranging claims but it’s worth understanding where Google is focusing research and the comments below give some insights into how informed commentators are viewing it.

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Another area that Google has kept our attention focused is on its ongoing roll-out of adaptations to its PPC services. And this week has been no different with the Inside Adwords event detailing a host of new features.

As always, the cynical will highlight that all these new features are designed to ensure Google benefits from higher bidding revenues – and, indeed, Google has always done its best to stoke these fires – but even a ruthless environment has winners. The key with these new features is to understand and implement them early and this overview should help with that.

The talk also gave subtle hints into where we can expect Google to take the platform in the future and that’s clearly a future where keywords are optional (or even redundant). With the rise of Google Shopping, Dynamic Search Ads, the erosion of match types, etc. coupled with the growing importance of structured data, Google definitely want to take the decision over your preferred market out of your hands and simply link users directly to you (and charge you for the privilege). If you trust Google to get it right, that’s all good; if you think they’re just going to strip-mine your assets, less so.

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And finally, yes, the inevitable mobile-friendly debrief continues with some feedback from Google over why the impact was quite as seismic as, say Panda and Penguin were. Essentially, it seems that all the forewarning did the trick – yes, you heard correctly: three years (or is it more?!) of the entire SEO industry saying, “this will be the year that mobile lifts off” and everyone had better their houses in order meant that, when the algorithmic measuring stick was put into action, vast swathes of the internet are already up to scratch.

So panic over, right? Maybe not.

The week also saw a couple of articles designed to re-ignite the fear. We saw Bryson Meunier detailing how the hoops will continue to get tougher to jump through and, specifically, we had Gary Illyes advising that further signals, such as page load speed, were likely to be added into the mobile algorithm in due course.

Check the changes you’ve made (or get on with them if you haven’t already) and be sure they’re future-proofed.